John Davidson to Return to THE FANTASTICKS Cast, 7/30

John Davidson, the celebrated television, theater and film actor who starred as Matt in the 1964 HallMark Hall of Fame version of THE FANTASTICKS and recently performed for a limited engagement in the Off-Broadway production as Henry, The Old Actor, will return to the cast on July 30 in that same role.

Davidson will remain with the production for five weeks through September 2. The Fantasticks currently stars triple platinum recording artist Aaron Carter in the role of Matt.

Tickets to The Fantasticks are priced at $50 - $75 and can be purchased by calling the box office at (212) 921-7862, by logging onto Ticketmaster.com, or by visiting the Snapple Theater Center box office at 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. A limited number of premium front row seats are available for each performance priced at $126.50.

Davidson's Broadway credits include Able Frake in State Fair and Bert Lahr's son in Foxy. He received the Theater Guild Award for his portrayal of Curly in the New York City Center's revival of Oklahoma. Off-Broadway credits include High Infidelity with Morgan Fairchild. Regionally he starred as Harold Hill in The Music Man, Abner in L'il Abner, Starbuck in 110 In The Shade, King Arthur and Lancelot in Camelot, Billy in Carousel, I Do! I Do!, Will in Will Rogers Follies, Billy Flynn in Chicago, Charlie Anderson in Shenandoah, Cervantes in Man Of La Mancha and Teddy Roosevelt in the one-man-play Bully.

A television mainstay for four decades, Davidson was the host of That's Incredible, The New Hollywood Squares, One Hundred Thousand Dollar Pyramid, The Tonight Show, The John Davidson Daytime Talk Show, The Kraft Sumer Music Hall and various prime time specials and beauty pageants. He also played Sally Field's husband in the television series The Girl With Something Extra.

Davidson's film credits include the Walt Disney musicals The Happiest Millionaire and The One And Only Genuine Original Family Band, Airport 80, Edward Scissorhands and The Squeeze. He is the author of the educational book The Art Of The Singing Entertainer and his autobiographical play The Boy Who Loved His Father. He has recorded 13 albums and performed in main showrooms at Caesar's Palace, the Las Vegas Hilton, The Aladdin Hotel and Casino, The MGM Grand and the Desert Inn. Davidson attended Denison University where he spent three summer seasons with the Denison Summer Theater graduating with a BA in theater arts.

A modern twist on Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks (music by Harvey Schmidt, book/lyrics/direction by Tom Jones) is the quintessential story of a boyfriend and girlfriend who quickly grow apart when they realize they want to experience the world. What follows is a hilarious and heartwarming story appropriate for all ages. The score, which includes the hit songs "Try To Remember", "Soon It's Gonna Rain" and "They Were You", is as timeless as the story itself. Having run for 42 years in its original production at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, The Fantasticks is the world's longest-running musical.

The cast of The Fantasticks features triple platinum recording artist Aaron Carter, Jeremiah James (Carousel in the West End), Bill Bateman (Broadway's Gypsy starring Patti LuPone, Hello, Dolly!), Tom Flagg (Broadway's Will Rogers Follies, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Oklahoma!), Jeremy Greenbaum (Preface at The York Theatre), Matt Leisy (St. Louis Rep's The History Boys, A Christmas Carol at Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Addi McDaniel (Little House on the Prairie at The Guthrie), Michael Nostrand (A&E's Emmy Award-winning Peter Pan, national tours of Jelly's Last Jam, The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Dan Sharkey (Broadway's The Music Man, Show Boat), Juliette Trafton (Christine in the national tour of Phantom of the Opera) and Scott Willis (Broadway's Annie, State Fair, Crazy For You).

The Fantasticks plays at The Snapple Theater Center's Jerry Orbach Theater, 210 West 50th Street at Broadway. The performance schedule is as follows: Mondays at 8PM, Tuesdays at 8PM, Wednesdays at 2PM, Fridays at 8PM, Saturdays at 2PM & 8PM and Sundays at 3PM & 7:30PM.

About The Fantasticks

When The Fantasticks (music by Harvey Schmidt; book/lyrics/direction by Tom Jones) opened in 1960 at a tiny theater on New York City's Sullivan Street, no one ever dreamed it would run for 17,162 performances and become the world's longest-running musical. Since then there have been over 11,000 productions in more than 3,000 U.S. cities and towns and in 67 countries, from Afghanistan to Iran to Zimbabwe, making The Fantasticks the world's most frequently-produced musical. The show has been performed at The White House and has survived eleven U.S. Presidents beginning with President Eisenhower. Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Israel have all seen multiple productions. The Fantasticks has been translated into numerous languages including Pashto, Dari, Icelandic, Arabic, Hebrew, Magyar and Mandarin.

The Fantasticks has played all fifty states, plus Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. It has been performed for the Peace Corps in Africa, at the Shawnee Mission in Kansas, the Menninger Foundation, Olympian Fields, Yellowstone National Park and the White Sands Missile Range. It was performed in Mandarin by the Peking Opera, and in 1990 under the auspices of the United States State Department it played for the first time in Russia. There have been two film versions, one in 1964 and one in 2000, and the list of notable individuals who have appeared in the show through the years includes Jerry Orbach, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Harrison Ford, Liza Minnelli, F. Murray Abraham, Patti LuPone, Kristin Chenoweth, American Idol finalist Anthony Fedorov and Amazing Race winner Nick Spangler.

Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt wrote The Fantasticks for a summer theater at Barnard College. After its Off Broadway opening in May 1960 it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently-produced musicals in the world. Their first Broadway show, 110 in the Shade, was revived on Broadway in a new production starring Audra McDonald. I Do! I Do!, their two-character musical starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston, was a success on Broadway and is frequently produced around the country and the world. (One production, in Minneapolis, played for 22 continuous years with the same two ac­tors in the leading roles.) For several years Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their theater workshop, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off Broadway play Colette starring Zoë Caldwell, then later did a full-scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theater songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the York Theater, and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children's book, was premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Tony Award for Excellence in the Theater for The Fantasticks, Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and on May 3, 1999 their stars were added to the Off Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Lucille Lortel Theater. In 2012, New York City's York Theater produced many of their shows in their Musicals in Mufti series and the duo were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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